Yakuza Boy: Or the Man with Painted Flesh (~Unedited~)

Chapter 13

I was shoveling Onigiri into my mouth when Yumiro placed a cell phone in front of my face.

"Yuji.. he wants to speak with you."

My mood instantly soured and I washed my snack down with a cool drink.

And here I was having a good day..

I took the phone from Yumiro and placed it against my ear, answering in a bored tone.
"Hello."

The other end of the phone was silent and I could already feel myself becoming annoyed.
Yumiro watched me from the opposite end of the table and I was about to hand the phone back to him when Yuji replied back.
"I will return to the house in 2 days. My task was completed earlier than I expected."

I made a slight humming noise and waited to hear what he would say next. I was hoping our conversation was done now that I was on a time crunch. I had forty eight hours to enjoy the outside world before returning to a depressing existence.

"How are you feeling?"
Yuji asked out of the blue.

Now, I was usually a very pleasant person but those words... they just set me off. I gripped the phone tighter and all but hissed.
"As if you care. Don't act like you haven't had me locked inside this house like an animal in a zoo. Fuck you."

Yumiro collected my plate and I handed the phone back to him quickly without a word.

"Can I go outside?"
I all but begged.

Yumiro nodded and I ran out the door and sat in my favorite area: the rock garden.

Yumiro joined me while I tried to get my nerves under control. All this time spent in the presence of this mysterious man should have made me uncomfortable but I honestly preferred him over Yuji and I had all these feelings bubbling up inside me.

While my conscious screamed at me to keep my feelings hidden, my heart told me otherwise. My lips parted and everything I had been holding in spilled out like water in a strainer.

"I get it... I should be lucky that I'm not dead. And I should be throwing myself at Yuji's feet because he saved me from a lifetime of turning tricks but I'm driving myself mad. Yuji comes back in two days and I'll go back to starving myself. No... I'll do something worse.. I know I will. And deep down I know he knows that I will too."

My fingers combed through the artistic curve of the garden's sand and I looked upon my handwork. What once was beautiful was now a marred mess.

"I used to be vibrant and full of life... Now I can't even call this life. I'm just here, as solitary as this rock."

I placed my hands on one of the rocks and tears fell from my eyes.
"I cry, I eat, I sleep, I repeat. Will I even recognize myself over the years? Will I even be here in a year. What will be my driving motivation for living? My mom? Myself?"

A bird landed on one of the rocks and I turned to Yumiro.

"If I have to go back to that.. I'm going to take my own life. Wasting away is a painful process and I don't want to drag this out any longer than I have to. I can't stay here.."

I blew out a breath and just decided to get it off of my chest.

I sat up on my knees and bowed in front of Yumiro, my head touching the grass.

"Yumiro... please buy me from Yuji. I will do my best to do all that you ask and I promise not to be a burden."
I rushed out quickly and closed my eyes tightly.

Yumiro was silent and I didn't know if that meant he was listening or he just didn't care.
It was most likely both. Yumiro was here to do a job and he had been paid to do said job. This wasn't an act of kindness...something that he himself had decided on out of the kindness of his heart.

I waited for him to say something... anything at all, counting in my head to ease my nerves. I was at five hundred and three when I realized that I wasn't going to receive an answer and that alone was an answer within itself. I sat back up slowly and lifted my head in embarrassment. Yumiro watched with his arms folded across his large chest and an unreadable expression on his face.

"You're more naive than I thought and that alone disappoints me. Know this, one week with me would make living with Yuji look like paradise. Tell me, do you have any medical training? No? Then you couldn't possibly help me. I'm a doctor and one of the best surgeons on the Japanese black market. I have no use for you in my line of work and no use for you in my bed. You are more of a burden than you're worth... why would I spend my hard earned money on a woman that starves herself when things don't go her way? You're a child and I already have two of those of my own. I seek only to make a profit. Taking you in would cause me to go bankrupt. You're unstable and a pushover.. that's a combination for a shit storm."
He spoke calmly.

My eyes widened at his words and I searched his face for anything that would indicate that he was joking but he just watched me with that same stoic face. He was being serious and he'd meant every word that he said.

I needed to wake up. These men rolled in the same circles and their business was just about everything. Drugs, prostitution, extortion, fraud, theft, murder and every thing in between.

This realization made me laugh. I doubled over with laughter and didn't stop until my sides hurt and tears sprang from my eyes.

"Forget it. In the end, I'm just rambling. You're here for a paycheck and I'm just desperate for some basic human interaction. I'm going to stay out here for a while. I'd like my medicine soon."

Yumiro nodded and walked around me and was about to enter the house when he added.
"We're trained to identify when a person is lying. You're not going to kill yourself. I know there's still some fight left in you."

Yumiro slid the door closed and I was left to my own thoughts again.

If only he knew that he'd extinguished that last flicker of hope moments before.

I was going to end my life on my own terms.

Fuck Yumiro and Fuck Yuji.

I'd see them both in hell.
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